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Shaukat Usmani (Maulla Bux Usta) (1901–1978)
was an early Indian communist, who was born to artstic USTA
family of Bikaner and a member of the émigré Communist Party of
India, established in Tashkent in 1920, and a founding member of the
Communist Party of India (CPI)
when it was formed in Kanpur
in 1925. He was also the only candidate to the British Parliament contesting elections,
while he was residing in India -- that too in a prison. He was
sentenced to a total of 16 years in jail after being tried in the
Kanpur
(Cawnpore) Case of 1923 and later the Meerut Conspiracy Case
of 1929.

In émigré
Communist Party of India

M.N.
Roy, an ex-member of the Anushilan Samiti, a powerful secret
revolutionary organization operating in East Bengal in the opening years of the
20th century, went to Moscow by the end of April 1920[1], and
soon after founded the émigré Communist Party of India at Tashkent
on 17 October 1920[2]. The
fledgling party became a part of Communist
International (Comintern) in 1921. Usmani had been a very
early leading activist of the émigré Communist Party of India.

M.N. Roy was sent by Lenin to Tashkent as head of Central
Asiatic Bureau of Comintern as well as the Indian Military School
to train an Indian army of revolutionaries[3].
The Indian Military School was closed in April 1921, as a quid
pro quo for industrial assistance that Britain promised to
Soviet Russia, under Anglo-Russian Trade Pact in March 1921. But
before its closure, the School indoctrinated many Muslim volunteers(muhajireens) who were on their way to Turkey to
fight for the restoration of Caliphate[4]. After
the closing down of the School, the Comintern started Communist
University of the Toilers of the East inMoscow. Usmani was one of the muhajireens who
was tutored both at Moscow as well as at Tashkent.

Early in 1922 thirteen Indians belonging to the émigré Indian
Communist Party crossed the Pamirs and reached India. They were all
arrested and put in jail in Moscow-Peshawar conspiracy case. Usmani was not in
this group, but a later batch, upon many of whom the British
government clamped the Kanpur conspiracy case. The Tashkent-Moscow
alumni who had dispersed all over the country did not have a smooth
working relationship with the local leadership in India under S.A.
Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed S.S. Mirajkar, S.V. Ghate
etc.[3].

At the same time a different kind of tension was building up
between the Communist Party of Great Britain and the émigré
communists. As a result, four members of the émigré CPI, including
Usmani, went to attend the sixth congress of Comintern without
seeking émigré Communist Party of India's nomination[3].
All these tensions did not come into open because of the strict
police surveillance. By this stage, Usmani was operating
underground under the nom de guerre of
Sikander Sur; his Comintern code name was D A Naoroji (sometimes
wrongly rendered as Naoradji)[5].

Kanpur
conspiracy case

After Peshawar in 1922, two more conspiracy cases were
instituted by the British government, one in Kanpur (1924) and
Meerut (1929). The accused in the cases included, among others,
important Communist organisers who worked in India, such as S.A.
Dange, Muzaffar Ahmad, Nalini Gupta and S.V. Ghate, and members of
the émigré party, such as Rafiq Ahmad and Shaukat Usmani.

On March 17, 1924, M.N. Roy, S.A. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini
Gupta, Shaukat Usmani, Singaravelu Chettiar, Ghulam Hussain and
others were charged that they as communists were seeking "to
deprive the King Emperor of his sovereignty of British India, by
complete separation of India from imperialistic Britain by a
violent revolution.", in what was called the Cawnpore (now spelt
Kanpur) Bolshevik Conspiracy case.

The case attracted interest of the people towards Comintern plan
to bring about violent revolution in India. "Pages of newspapers
daily splashed sensational communist plans and people for the first
time learned such a large scale about communism and its doctrines
and the aims of the Communist International in India."[6]

Singaravelu Chettiar was released on account of illness. M.N.
Roy was out of the country and therefore could not be arrested.
Ghulam Hussain confessed that he had received money from the
Russians in Kabul and was
pardoned. Muzaffar Ahmed, Shaukat Usmani and Dange were sentenced
for four years of imprisonment. This case was responsible for
actively introducing communism to the Indian masses[6].

After Kanpur, Britain had triumphantly declared that the case
had “finished off the communists" [7]. But
the industrial town of Kanpur, in December 1925, witnessed a
conference of different communist groups, under the chairmanship of
Singaravelu Chettiar. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini Gupta, Shaukat
Usmani were among the key organizers of the meeting. The meeting
adopted a resolution for the formation of the Communist Party of
India with its headquarters in Bombay (new spelling: Mumbai) . The British Government's extreme
hostility towards the bolsheviks, made them to decide not to openly
function as a communist party; instead, they chose a more open and
non-federated platform, under the name the Workers and Peasants
Parties.

The British Government was worried about the growing influence
of the Communist International in India. The government's immediate
response was to foist yet another conspiracy case -- the Meerut Conspiracy Case-- on them.
Usmani along with 32 persons were arrested on or about March 20
1929 and were put on trial under Section 121A of the Indian Penal
Code, which declares,

Whoever within or without British India conspires to commit any
of the offenses punishable by Section 121 or to deprive the King of
the sovereignty of British India or any part thereof, or conspires
to overawe, by means of criminal force or the show of criminal
force, the Government of India or any local Government, shall be
punished with trnsportation for life[8], or any
shorter term, or with imprisonment of either description which may
extend to ten years.

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The
charges

Though all the accused were not communists, the charges framed
against them betrayed the government's fear of growth of communist
ideas in India. "For example, Lester Hutchinson, later released as
innocent after spending four years in prison, was arrested as an
afterthought when he took up the task of carrying on some of the
trade union and agitational work after the arrest of the others,
was a merely journalist on the Indian Daily Mail and
unconnected with the trade union movement.[9].

The main charges were that in 1921 Dange, Shaukat Usmani and
Muzaffar Ahmad entered into a conspiracy to establish a branch of
Comintern in India and they were helped by various persons,
including the accused Philip Spratt and Benjamin Francis Bradley,
sent to India by the Communist International. The aim of the
accused persons, according to the charges, was

to deprive the King Emperor of the sovereignty of British India,
and for such purpose to use the methods and carry out the programme
and plan of campaign outlined and ordained by the Communist
International.

The Sessions Court in Meerut awarded stringent sentences to the
accused in January 1933. Out of the accused 27 persons were
convicted with various durations of 'transportation'. While
Muzaffar Ahmed was transported for life, Dange, Spratt, Ghate,
Joglekar and Nimbkar were each awarded transportation for a period
of 12 years. Usmani was given ten years. On appeal, in July 1933,
the sentences of Ahmed, Dange and Usmani were reduced three years.
Reductions were also made in the sentences of other convicts.

Communist candidate from
Spen Valley

During Meerut trial Usmani stood unsuccessfully as a candidate
in a British general election for the Communist Party of Great
Britain from his prison cell in India, for the 1929 general
election for the constituency of
Spen Valley. Usmani is believed to be the only candidate ever
to stand in a British General Election whilst resident in India[9].
The Spen Valley seat was significant since it was the focus of an
attempt by the leader of a pro-Tory group of right-leaning
Liberals, Sir John Simon, to get back into
Parliament. He had been the man who declared in 1926 that the
General Strike was illegal, and who in 1930 headed theCommission to
report on the situation in India.

Usmani’s selection as candidate arose from his prominence in the
Meerut trial. Since he was a prisoner thousands of miles away, he
was unable to conduct the campaign himself, so a deputy to
represent him was chosen - one Billy Brain[9].
Communists from many parts of Britain converged at Spen Valley. The
campaign was successful in the sense that it brought into focus
Meerut and harshness of British rule in India, which were hitherto
unknown to many[9].

Candidate from South East
St Pancras

The long drawn Meerut trial enabled the Communist Party to again
run Usmani in the 1931 general election for St.
Pancras South East against TorySouth African mining millionaire, Sir Alfred Lane Beit. The candidature of
Usmani was aimed by the Communist Party of Great Britain to ensure
freedom for India, and to highlight the plight of the Meerut
prisoners[9].
In this election, the communists polled seventy five thousand
votes, which was a 50% increase on the previous, 1929 General
election figure. The party was dismayed at the result. Harry Pollitt, the
new general secretary of the Party, had expected that between one
hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand would vote
communist. He was shocked, and told a meeting of the British
Commission of the Communist International that he could not
understand why after two Labour Governments, and the betrayal of
the General Strike, that still almost seven million workers could
vote Labour[10].

Later
life

Aftermath of the Meerut case was the emergence of a stronger
CPI, instead of what the British planned for -- obliteration of the
party. After the release of the Meerut prisoners, in 1933, a party
with a centralized apparatus came into being. The CPI came out with
its own manifesto and was affiliated to the Communist International
in 1934[11]
However, Usmani did not figure in the Party building exercise. The
leadership had gone to local (as opposed to émigré Tashkent-Moscow
cadre) communists like S.A. Dange, P.C. Joshi,P.
Sundarayya etc. Nothing much had been heard about Usmani after
release from the jail.

Similar fate happened to other members of the émigré CPI.
Muhammad Ali Sepassi, M.N. Roy's close aide stayed back in Paris and was shot dead by the Nazis in 1940.
Muhammed Shafique, first secretary of émigré CPI, wandered about in
Europe till 1932 and then
vanished. Abdulla Safdar came to India only in 1933 when most of
the comrades were booked under the Meerut case. He remained with
M.N. Roy, who had by then, had only little standing in the
international communist movement. G.A.K. Luhani who had joined Roy
in 1921 never ame to India. Like other émigré CPI members, Usmani
also slipped into oblivion.

Books

Peshawar to Moscow Leaves from an Indian Muhajireen's
diary, Shaukat Usmani's earliest book was published by
Swarajya Publishing House, Benares in 1927[12]. Much
later in life, Usmani published a book on the same theme,
Historic Trips of a Revolutionary - Sojourn in the Soviet
Union[13]. The
book gives an account of Usmai's part in the émigré Communist Party
of India, and other examples of progress in his homeland like the
Indian Military School. He gives colorful descriptions of his stays
in Moscow, during which he lodges at the Hotel Delovoi Dior (which
has a meaning something akin to the “Business Courtyard”), and
boards at the Hotel De Lux, once a gathering place for Communist
leaders from all over the world. He also describes a trip from
Tashkent through the Ukraine to Crimea. This book is focused mainly
on the Middle Eastern states of the Soviet Union[5].

Usmani published in 1939Char Yatri in Hindi and
Char Musafir in Urdu and later in English as
Four Travellers[14]. It
is an account of a journey of four Indian revolutionaries through
Jagdalak, Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Termiz, Bukhara and Samarkand. He had also published a collection
of eight stories in 1951 called Night of the eclipse; a
collection of 8 short stories. Karachi: Usta Publications Corp.